Panel and book launch for Visual Investigations: Between Advocacy, Journalism and Law

Join us for a discussion and book launch in connection with Visual Investigations: Between Advocacy, Journalism, and Law, an exhibition on view at The Architekturmuseum der TUM in Munich, Germany. 

For in-person attendance, please register in advance here. For Zoom attendance, please register here. Registration is required.

Co-presented at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, this special event features a conversation with curator Andres Lepik, civil rights attorney Elena Cohen, artist Suneil Sanzgiri and Director of SITU Research Brad Samuels. The panel will discuss the emerging field of visual investigations and how architecture operates between advocacy, journalism, and law in the pursuit of justice and accountability. 

About the event participants
Brad Samuels is a founding partner at SITU Research, a Brooklyn-based visual investigations practice focused on merging data and design to create new pathways for justice. SITU Research’s work supports activists, advocates, and lawyers, bridging the gap between digital evidence and the communities that can best deploy them towards justice and accountability. Samuels has overseen the team’s visual investigations for legal and advocacy organizations including The International Criminal Court, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, The Associated Press, Frontline, The United Nations and many others. Outside the multidisciplinary practice, Samuels has served on the Technology Advisory Board for the International Criminal Court, The Advisory Board for the Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Human Rights Science and the board of The Architectural League of New York. He currently teaches at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union.

Suneil Sanzgiri is an Indian American artist, researcher, and filmmaker. Spanning experimental video and film, animations, essays, and installations, his work contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture, and diaspora in relation to structural violence and anticolonial struggles across the Global South. Sanzgiri’s films offer sonic and visual journeys through family history, local mythology, and colonial legacies of extraction in Goa, India—where his family originates. His first institutional solo exhibition “Here the Earth Grows Gold” opened at the Brooklyn Museum in October 2023. His award-winning films have circulated widely at film festivals and art institutions across the world including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Doclisboa, Viennale, Camden International Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, Open City Docs, REDCAT, MASS MoCA, Wexner Center for the Arts, moCa Cleveland, Le Cinéma Club, Criterion Collection, and many more.

Elena L. Cohen is an Assistant Professor of Law at Widener University Delaware Law School, an accomplished attorney, activist, and academic with a J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a PhD in Political Science from the City University of New York. She is the former President of the National Lawyers Guild and has extensive experience in civil rights litigation, criminal defense, and legal support for protest activities. Cohen’s scholarly contributions include articles on the intersection of politics and law and a chapter in “Biopolitics and Utopia: An Interdisciplinary Reader.” At Delaware Law, Professor Cohen will teach a wide range of courses including Civil Rights, and Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Legal Writing and Torts.

Andres Lepik is Professor for architecture history and curatorial studies at Technical University Munich (TUM) and director of the Architecture Museum. He studied art history and finished with a PhD on architectural models in the Renaissance. In 1994 he started working as Curator at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin presenting Renzo Piano (2000) and Content. Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA in 2003. From 2007 to 2011 he was Curator at the Architecture and Design Department in MoMA, New York, showing Small Scale, Big Change. New Architectures of Social Engagement. In 2011/12 he was Loeb-Fellow at Graduate School of Design in Harvard University. Since 2012 in Munich he has presented numerous exhibitions, as AFRITECTURE. Building Social Change, (2013/14), Lina Bo Bardi 100 (2015), Francis Kéré. Radically Simple (2016/17) and recently Who’s Next? Homelessness, Architecture and Cities (2022). Andres Lepik has published numerous books and articles and lectured in many universities worldwide.

About the publication
Reading Visual Investigations explores the emerging field of visual investigations, offering critical insights through seven case studies and commissioned essays from practitioners. More details on purchasing online here. Copies will be also be on sale at the event. 

About the exhibition
Human rights violations are more present in the public domain than ever before, not least due to the ubiquity of image sources: smartphones, satellites, surveillance equipment, and police body cameras produce large volumes of audiovisual material, recording violent and repressive incidents, as well as persistent injustices. Newsrooms, prosecutor’s offices, and human rights organizations alike have become increasingly concerned with processing and contextualizing this stream of data, both in the context of immediate, breaking news as well as through longer-term reporting and accountability mechanisms. In order to provide comprehensive presentations, those working in the field of visual investigation utilize a range of tools to connect video and image content with people, places, and events. Interdisciplinary teams that can include architects, filmmakers and computer scientists, among others, mobilize a diverse constellation of tools and methods to analyze violations across time and space. From applying geo-spatial analysis and 3D modeling to the rapidly developing fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence, their aim is to uncover and present the facts and their contexts rigorously, transparently, and as independently as possible. In the face of a rapidly evolving landscape of contested events and misinformation, visual investigation has undergone accelerated development—a reality that presents opportunities and challenges in equal measure.

Featured investigations dive into issues including detention camps in the Xinjiang region of China, the suppression of dissent by police in the United States, the killing of Colombian journalist Abelardo Liz, the Russian airstrike on Mariupol’s Drama Theatre, remote sensing and land dispossession in the West Bank, enforced disappearances during Mexico’s “Dirty War,” and the consequences of the climate crisis for Pacific Island states.

Collaborators: Alison Killing, London; Bellingcat, Amsterdam; The Center for Spatial Technologies (CST), Kyiv and Berlin; and SITU Research, New York City

Curators: Lisa Luksch, Andres Lepik
Exhibition design: CPWH, Munich, with exhibition design support by Amir Halabi 
Graphic design: PARAT.cc, Munich